Exotic Birds and Strange Fruit: Large Pair of Mirrored Palaceware Vases

Stephen Bowers

Exotic Birds and Strange Fruit: Large Pair of Mirrored Palaceware Vases by Stephen Bowers

Details

Artist
Stephen Bowers
Title
Exotic Birds and Strange Fruit: Large Pair of Mirrored Palaceware Vases
Year
2012
Medium
wheel-thrown earthenware, underglaze colour, clear earthenware glaze, on-glaze gold lustre
Size
75 x 55 cm diam.
Details

Form thrown by Mark Heidenreich

Stock Number
212123

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Exhibited

Stephen Bowers, Larks Tongues in Aspic Part IV, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, Melbourne, 27 Oct - 8 Dec 2012

Further Information

Paying specific homage to bird illustrator William Cooper, pairs of red tailed black cockatoos and sulphur crested white cockatoos perch in an overall design of rich botanical composition against a background of gold lustre.

Botanical elements in the design reference the engraved Banksia serrata from Sir Joseph Bank’s Florigelium (in turn based on a finshed drawing by J.F.Miller from the original watercolour by Cook’s draftsman and artist of the Endeavour Voyage, Sidney Parkinson. As well as the ubiquitous Australiana of gum nuts and leaves, other elements reference designs from French printed cotton toile produced by the Oberkampf factory in Jouy in about 1775. The scrolling tendril upon which the two white cockatoos sit is a composite, derived from a Roman cup ornament and a fragment of a Greek relief, both found in Meyers Handbook of Ornament  Batsford 1892.